CNX Resources (CNX) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Maintenance Production and Utica Strategy

CNX Resources (NYSE: CNX) used its Q3 2026 earnings call to emphasize production discipline, share repurchases and the long-term transition toward Central Pennsylvania Utica development. Management did not issue formal 2027 guidance but said the company currently expects to remain in maintenance production mode.

Key Takeaways

• CNX’s current 2027 planning assumes maintenance production. Management said the company is well hedged entering 2027 and would adjust activity if market conditions deteriorate.
• Management said storage is near the five-year average and could approach 4 T entering winter. Incremental production would require stronger forward pricing.
• Approximately two-thirds of CNX’s portfolio is exposed to in-basin pricing. The company curtailed some volumes when local gas prices fell below $1, but total Q3 curtailments were described as “less than a B.”
• Share repurchases remain the benchmark for evaluating M&A and other capital allocation options. Management views buybacks as a way to increase production and free cash flow on a per-share basis without raising aggregate output.
• CNX expects another four to five years of Southwest Pennsylvania Marcellus development before shifting predominantly toward Central Pennsylvania Utica and Marcellus around the end of the decade.
• Higher diesel and steel prices are expected to affect less than 1% of the company’s capital program, supported by electric fracturing fleets and reduced reliance on water trucking.

Business and Operating Performance

CNX said Southwest Pennsylvania Marcellus remains the most economic near-term development area because infrastructure is already in place and many projects involve returning to existing locations.

The development mix is expected to gradually incorporate more deep Utica wells. Around the end of the decade, the program is expected to shift primarily toward Central Pennsylvania Utica, supplemented by Central Pennsylvania Marcellus. Southwest Pennsylvania Utica and other horizons could be developed later.

Management identified Utica drilling days as the main remaining opportunity for cost reductions. It also said the 2027 development mix should broadly resemble the current program, blending deep Utica activity with remaining Southwest Pennsylvania inventory, although no precise well count was provided.

Management Guidance

CNX did not provide formal 2027 guidance. Based on current conditions, management said the company remains in a maintenance production mindset because its hedge position provides greater protection than many peers.

The company would consider adding volumes if the longer-term natural gas strip rises enough to support incremental supply. If pricing weakens further, management said it would make necessary adjustments.

CNX is participating in discussions about direct gas sales to potential customers for projects expected over the next five years. However, management said long-term contracts must offer a sufficient premium to justify fixed delivery commitments, and it provided no timeline for an agreement.

Risks and Watch Points

• In-basin gas prices have periodically fallen below $1 and reached approximately $0.50-$0.60, creating an incentive to curtail unhedged production.
• With about two-thirds of volumes exposed to the basin, local weather, demand and transportation economics can affect realized differentials.
• Diesel and steel costs are increasing, although management currently expects a limited effect on total capital spending.
• Long-term Appalachian gas demand remains uncertain, particularly regarding the scale and timing of demand from AI-related and other projects.
• The economics of direct customer contracts depend on receiving an adequate premium for long-term delivery obligations.
• Capital efficiency remains sensitive to inflation and the amount of infrastructure required in any given year.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Capital allocation: Management said CNX remains open to M&A that increases long-term free cash flow per share. However, share repurchases continue to set the hurdle rate for potential transactions. The company did not provide details on future revolver use or near-term repurchase tactics.

Natural gas demand: CNX is bullish on long-term Appalachian demand but declined to quantify the opportunity. Management said production growth will remain tied to pricing signals from the supply curve rather than demand forecasts alone.

Gas differentials: Management attributed the quarter’s difficult in-basin environment to weather and soft pricing. Some volumes remained in the basin because transportation to MichCon and other markets was uneconomic.

Management transition: Alan Shepard said CNX was pleased to appoint internal candidate Ravi Srivastava as CFO. He provided no additional detail on Everett’s departure beyond the company’s 8-K filings.

Appalachian consolidation: CNX declined to comment on another operator’s announced transaction. Management reiterated that acquisitions are only one capital allocation option and must compete with share repurchases on per-share value creation.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the CNX Resources Third Quarter 2026 Q&A Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Lewis. Please go ahead.

Tyler Lewis

Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to CNX's Third Quarter Q&A Conference Call. Today, we will be answering questions related to our third quarter results. This morning, we posted to our Investor Relations website an updated slide presentation and detailed third quarter earnings release data such as quarterly E&P data, financial statements and non-GAAP reconciliations, which can be found in a document titled 3Q 2026 Earnings Results and Supplemental Information of CNX Resources.

Also, we posted to our Investor Relations website our prepared remarks for the quarter, which we hope everyone had a chance to read before the call, as the call today will be used exclusively for Q&A. With me today for Q&A are Alan Shepard, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Ravi Srivastava, our Chief Financial Officer; and Navneet Behl, our Chief Operating Officer. Please note that the company's remarks made during this call, including answers to questions, include forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results may differ materially as a result of many factors. A discussion of risks and uncertainties related to those factors in CNX's business is contained in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in the release issued today. With that, thank you for joining us this morning.

And operator, can you please open the call up for Q&A at this time.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Gabriel Daoud with Truist.

Question-and-Answer Session

Gabe Daoud

I was hoping we could maybe just start with the macro backdrop. And you noted in the prepared remarks, you'll certainly remain flexible and responsive to the current environment. So curious maybe how that would kind of translate into your thoughts on '27, just given where gas prices are?

Alan Shepard

Yes. Hey, Gabe, thanks for the question. Where we sit right now, so we're pretty much on the 5-year average for storage levels. We'll be close to 4 Ts going into winter. Right now, we're not giving forward guidance, but right now, it looks like we'll be in maintenance production mode, right? Like unless we see something that sort of incentivizes producers to bring on more gas, we'll be staying steady state. And obviously, if it sort of degrades from here, we'll make adjustments as necessary.

Gabe Daoud

Okay. Thanks, Alan. Okay. So maintenance for now, like not below maintenance given prices on the screen currently. You feel good with still maintenance.

Alan Shepard

Yes. We're pretty hedged going into '27. So we're in a little bit different shape than most folks. So right now, we'd still be in the maintenance mode mindset.

Gabe Daoud

Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Great. That's helpful. And then my follow-up would be another, I guess, high-level question, a big merger in basin this week was announced, as I'm sure you're all aware. Would love to hear your thoughts maybe on the transaction and just M&A in Appalachia more generally.

Alan Shepard

Yes. I want to comment on other folks' M&A. Obviously, it's a commodity industry and you see consolidation in those sorts of industries. We'll see what the sort of the combined company does in terms of production levels and things like that, but not much color to provide from our side on it.

Gabe Daoud

Okay. And just CNX's appetite for M&A at this stage?

Alan Shepard

Yes. So it's one of the lanes of capital allocation, right, as we always talk about, we're open to things that are accretive to the long-term free cash flow per share value. But it's just one of the things we review. And right now, share repurchases are sort of the bar we test all of that against, and they continue to be extremely attractive as you saw this quarter.

Operator

And the next question comes from Leo Mariani with ROTH.

Leo Mariani

I wanted to see if you could comment on inflation. Are you starting to see that creep in, in areas of the business? And do you expect that to maybe get a little worse next year?

Alan Shepard

I'll turn that over to Nav.

Navneet Behl

Yes, on the inflation side, the cost increase we are seeing are on two things. One is diesel and other is steel. But our overall impact to our program is less than 1% of our capital. So not much impact moving forward for us.

Alan Shepard

Yes. Leo, if you think about it, we've driven most of the diesel out of our system through sort of our emission reduction initiatives over the years. We run electric frac fleets. We have intensive sort of in-water transportation, right? We don't run a lot of water trucks and things like that. So as Nat mentioned, our exposure to those 2 categories are pretty limited moving into '27, but there are certainly increases there as everyone is.

Leo Mariani

Okay. Appreciate that. And then just a question on sort of the Utica here. I know you haven't had some recent wells. But as you look out a handful of years, certainly my understanding that you guys are going to continue to kind of do more in the Utica. As you think about that, are you contemplating any kind of new midstream build-out you think might be necessary to kind of get some of that deeper Utica in Central Pennsylvania online several years down the road?

Alan Shepard

Yes. As we sort of move through that CPA field, right, we're going to develop that as efficiently as possible, right? We've had a lot of time to sort of plan out the runway there. You're not going to see any major spikes in sort of infrastructure build. Year-to-year, you'll see some oscillation, but really, call it, in the $25 million plus or minus range on infrastructure.

Operator

The next question comes from Phil Jungwirth.

Phillip Jungwirth

Previously, you talked about 40,000 to 50,000 Southwest PA Marcellus acres remaining to be developed. I guess just wondering how you expect the transition activity in coming years. Is the focus going to be predominantly in this area through the decade? Or are we going to see a more gradual pivot, which would actually extend years of inventory in the core?

Alan Shepard

Yes. Obviously, the developing what's remaining in the Southwest PA area on the Marcellus front is the most sort of economic thing to do, right? The infrastructure is all there and they're mostly return trips and things like that. As we talked about before, the way to think about it is we sort of exit the Southwest PA Marcellus as we kind of exit the decade, right?

So there's another 4 to 5 years sort of develop the rest of that. And then the program shifts over to CPA Utica predominantly with CPA Marcellus as we call that area. And then ultimately, you would return back to Southwest PA for Southwest PA Utica and other horizons later on down the road.

Phillip Jungwirth

Okay. Great. And then can you remind us on maintenance CapEx for CNX and maybe a little bit more theoretical because there's still the potential to drive down costs. But if you did shift to predominantly deep Utica position in Central PA, how do you expect total spend to trend relative to this year's more Southwest PA focused program?

Alan Shepard

Yes. So the way we think about it sort of a capital efficiency metric, so all in with the capital infrastructure and the D&C, you're calling that $0.85 to $0.90 range is where we want to be sort of moving forward. Obviously, that's subject to things like inflation and amount of infrastructure in any given year. But the avenue where there's still opportunity to sort of squeeze cost out of the system is really on the drilling days on the Utica side, right? So that's really where our focus is. And every time we go back to a new pad there, that's where we're being intentful.

Operator

And the next question comes from Michael Scialla with Stephens.

Michael Scialla

You had some management change during the quarter. Just wanted to see if you could add any color on Everett's departure and Ravi assuming the role of CFO.

Alan Shepard

Yes. Excited to have Ravi. Great to have an in-house candidate with his sort of background and skill set to sort of step in the role. I'm not going to add anything additional on sort of the Everett departure outside what was in the 8-Ks.

Michael Scialla

Okay. Fair enough. I guess thinking long term, been some pretty robust natural gas demand forecast out there. I guess I want to see your thoughts on do you agree with those? And if they play out, how would CNX respond? Would you do anything different than the way the company has been operating in the last really 6 years with aggressively buying back shares?

Alan Shepard

Yes. I would say we're extremely bullish on sort of long-term demand in basin. In terms of giving you a precise number, whether that's 2 Bs or 20 Bs, time will tell, right? I mean there's still a lot of uncertainty on the ultimate end users in terms of AI and things like that. But what's clear is natural gas, every drop here in Appalachia is going to get developed.

From a pricing perspective, what that means is we're still going to be constrained by the supply curve. This is the way we sort of think about it. So when we see the longer-term strip increasing in pricing to sort of bring a call on what we have, that's when we'll bring incremental volumes to the market until then sort of maintenance of production the way we think about it.

Operator

And the next question comes from Betty Jiang with Barclays.

Wei Jiang

First on the gas differential, like 3Q differential is a bit wider than where we were -- where we were expecting. So just wondering if there's anything in particular that impacted this? And could you remind us what's your in-basin exposure?

Alan Shepard

Yes. I mean our in-basin exposure is 2/3, 2/3 of the whole portfolio, right? Been challenging up here in basin with sort of the weather and the softness. Any given day, our team is out there optimizing. We have different sales points, but a lot of the volumes ended up just staying here because it wasn't economic to sort of send to MichCon or other places.

Wei Jiang

Got it. And then just you guys don't subscribe to the curtailment strategy, right? Was there any curtailment impact?

Alan Shepard

Yes. No, great question, Betty. So there's been some periods over the last couple of months where gas has dropped sub-$1 because we hedge, there's not a lot we need to do in terms of shut-ins, but there's been some couple of stretches where we have curtailed volumes. It's been less than a B though, probably for the whole quarter. So we haven't sort of spiked that out. But we definitely are sensitive as other folks when you get down to $0.50, $0.60 gas in basin, there's no reason for anybody to sort of reach that level if you're unhedged.

Wei Jiang

Right. No, that makes sense. And then another question on capital allocation. It's the second quarter in a row now that you lean on the balance sheet a bit for a pretty outsized buyback. Is that a level that -- something that you will consider -- continue to do? And is there a limit on how much willingness you're willing to maybe draw on the balance sheet on the revolver?

Alan Shepard

Yes. We generally don't try to give too much color on the short-term tactics from the buyback program because that's not sort of in our interest. But I think if you can look back at the history of what we've done, we sort of stepped on the gas when see the sort of sector trade-off and we laid off when the sector is a little more bid to it.

But longer term, we still view every share we repurchase as a sort of great opportunity to create long-term per share value, particularly when we think about the question about long-term gas demand, right? Like instead of growing production, you can grow production per share by repurchasing shares, right? That's another way to do it. So...

Operator

And we have another question from Michael Scialla with Stephens.

Michael Scialla

I just wanted to ask about a lot of companies talking about having conversations and some agreements on direct sales to customers. Are you having any of those kind of conversations with potential customers? And if so, what sort of time frame should we be thinking about? Are these like towards the end of the decade? Or could they be sooner than that?

Alan Shepard

Yes. We're certainly in the mix with everybody else here in the basin on some of these discussions. I mean the challenge has been what's the incentive to like to sell off the long-term contracts if you're not getting sort of enough of a premium to lock into that fixed delivery. So that's been the challenge. No particular time line as folks come to market and look for gas for these projects that are coming online over the next 5 years, we'll participate and we'll update if there's something meaningful to update on it.

Michael Scialla

Got you. And then you mentioned a little bit about deep Utica. Should we be thinking for '27, similar kind of program as this year, turning in line 7 or so wells? Or could that -- could you flex that up at all? Or do you have plans to do that?

Alan Shepard

Yes. I think the mix sort of looks like this year. I don't want to give you the precise numbers off the top of my head, but the mix is we're blending in deep Utica with the remaining sort of Southwest PA that we've talked about. And any given year, I wouldn't get too engaged in sort of any false precision on the signal there. Like I said, we're super bullish on that horizon, and it's sort of going to be core to the next couple of decades.

Operator

And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tyler Lewis for any closing comments.

Tyler Lewis

Great. Thank you again for joining us this morning. Please feel free to reach out if anyone has any additional questions. Otherwise, we'll look forward to speaking with everyone again next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.